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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Coming Home, by Edith Wharton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Coming Home
+       1916
+
+Author: Edith Wharton
+
+Release Date: January 17, 2008 [EBook #24349]
+[Last updated: September 18, 2017]]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMING HOME ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+COMING HOME
+
+By Edith Wharton
+
+Copyright, 1916, By Charles Scribner's Sons
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+The young men of our American Relief Corps are beginning to come back
+from the front with stories.
+
+There was no time to pick them up during the first months--the whole
+business was too wild and grim. The horror has not decreased, but nerves
+and sight are beginning to be disciplined to it. In the earlier days,
+moreover, such fragments of experience as one got were torn from their
+setting like bits of flesh scattered by shrapnel. Now things that seemed
+disjointed are beginning to link themselves together, and the broken
+bones of history are rising from the battle-fields.
+
+I can't say that, in this respect, all the members of the Relief Corps
+have made the most of their opportunity. Some are unobservant, or
+perhaps simply inarticulate; others, when going beyond the bald
+statistics of their job, tend to drop into sentiment and cinema scenes;
+and none but H. Macy Greer has the gift of making the thing told seem as
+true as if one had seen it. So it is on H. Macy Greer that I depend,
+and when his motor dashes him back to Paris for supplies I never fail to
+hunt him down and coax him to my rooms for dinner and a long cigar.
+
+Greer is a small hard-muscled youth, with pleasant manners, a
+sallow face, straight hemp-coloured hair and grey eyes of unexpected
+inwardness. He has a voice like thick soup, and speaks with the slovenly
+drawl of the new generation of Americans, dragging his words along like
+reluctant dogs on a string, and depriving his narrative of every shade
+of expression that intelligent intonation gives. But his eyes see so
+much that they make one see even what his foggy voice obscures.
+
+Some of his tales are dark and dreadful, some are unutterably sad, and
+some end in a huge laugh of irony. I am not sure how I ought to classify
+the one I have written down here.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+ON my first dash to the Northern fighting line--Greer told me the other
+night--I carried supplies to an ambulance where the surgeon asked me to
+have a talk with an officer who was badly wounded and fretting for news
+of his people in the east of France.
+
+He was a young Frenchman, a cavalry lieutenant, trim and slim, with a
+pleasant smile and obstinate blue eyes that I liked. He looked as if
+he could hold on tight when it was worth his while. He had had a leg
+smashed, poor devil, in the first fighting in Flanders, and had been
+dragging on for weeks in the squalid camp-hospital where I found him. He
+didn't waste any words on himself, but began at once about his family.
+They were living, when the war broke out, at their country-place in
+the Vosges; his father and mother, his sister, just eighteen, and his
+brother Alain, two years younger. His father, the Comte de Rechamp,
+had married late in life, and was over seventy: his mother, a good deal
+younger, was crippled with rheumatism; and there was, besides--to
+round off the group--a helpless but intensely alive and domineering
+old grandmother about whom all the others revolved. You know how French
+families hang together, and throw out branches that make new roots but
+keep hold of the central trunk, like that tree--what's it called?--that
+they give pictures of in books about the East.
+
+Jean de Rechamp--that was my lieutenant's name--told me his family was
+a typical case. "We're very _province_," he said. "My people live
+at Rechamp all the year. We have a house at Nancy--rather a fine old
+hotel--but my parents go there only once in two or three years, for a
+few weeks. That's our 'season.'...Imagine the point of view! Or rather
+don't, because you couldn't...." (He had been about the world a good
+deal, and known something of other angles of vision.)
+
+Well, of this helpless exposed little knot of people he had had no
+word--simply nothing--since the first of August. He was at home, staying
+with them at Rechamp, when war broke out. He was mobilised the first
+day, and had only time to throw his traps into a cart and dash to the
+station. His depot was on the other side of France, and communications
+with the East by mail and telegraph were completely interrupted during
+the first weeks. His regiment was sent at once to the fighting line,
+and the first news he got came to him in October, from a communique in
+a Paris paper a month old, saying: "The enemy yesterday retook Rechamp."
+After that, dead silence: and the poor devil left in the trenches to
+digest that "_retook_"!
+
+There are thousands and thousands of just such cases; and men bearing
+them, and cracking jokes, and hitting out as hard as they can. Jean
+de Rechamp knew this, and tried to crack jokes too--but he got his leg
+smashed just afterward, and ever since he'd been lying on a straw pallet
+under a horse-blanket, saying to himself: "_Rechamp retaken_."
+
+"Of course," he explained with a weary smile, "as long as you can tot
+up your daily bag in the trenches it's a sort of satisfaction--though
+I don't quite know why; anyhow, you're so dead-beat at night that no
+dreams come. But lying here staring at the ceiling one goes through the
+whole business once an hour, at the least: the attack, the slaughter,
+the ruins...and worse.... Haven't I seen and heard things enough on
+_this_ side to know what's been happening on the other? Don't try to
+sugar the dose. I _like_ it bitter."
+
+I was three days in the neighbourhood, and I went back every day to see
+him. He liked to talk to me because he had a faint hope of my getting
+news of his family when I returned to Paris. I hadn't much myself, but
+there was no use telling him so. Besides, things change from day to day,
+and when we parted I promised to get word to him as soon as I could
+find out anything. We both knew, of course, that that would not be till
+Rechamp was taken a third time--by his own troops; and perhaps soon
+after that, I should be able to get there, or near there, and make
+enquiries myself. To make sure that I should forget nothing, he drew
+the family photographs from under his pillow, and handed them over:
+the little witch-grandmother, with a face like a withered walnut, the
+father, a fine broken-looking old boy with a Roman nose and a weak chin,
+the mother, in crape, simple, serious and provincial, the little sister
+ditto, and Alain, the young brother--just the age the brutes have been
+carrying off to German prisons--an over-grown thread-paper boy with too
+much forehead and eyes, and not a muscle in his body. A charming-looking
+family, distinguished and amiable; but all, except the grandmother,
+rather usual. The kind of people who come in sets.
+
+As I pocketed the photographs I noticed that another lay face down by
+his pillow. "Is that for me too?" I asked.
+
+He coloured and shook his head, and I felt I had blundered. But after a
+moment he turned the photograph over and held it out.
+
+"It's the young girl I am engaged to. She was at Rechamp visiting my
+parents when war was declared; but she was to leave the day after I
+did...." He hesitated. "There may have been some difficulty about her
+going.... I should like to be sure she got away.... Her name is Yvonne
+Malo."
+
+He did not offer me the photograph, and I did not need it. That girl had
+a face of her own! Dark and keen and splendid: a type so different
+from the others that I found myself staring. If he had not said "_ma
+fiancee_" I should have understood better. After another pause he went
+on: "I will give you her address in Paris. She has no family: she lives
+alone--she is a musician. Perhaps you may find her there." His colour
+deepened again as he added: "But I know nothing--I have had no news of
+her either."
+
+To ease the silence that followed I suggested: "But if she has no
+family, wouldn't she have been likely to stay with your people, and
+wouldn't that be the reason of your not hearing from her?"
+
+"Oh, no--I don't think she stayed." He seemed about to add: "If she
+could help it," but shut his lips and slid the picture out of sight.
+
+As soon as I got back to Paris I made enquiries, but without result.
+The Germans had been pushed back from that particular spot after a
+fortnight's intermittent occupation; but their lines were close by,
+across the valley, and Rechamp was still in a net of trenches. No one
+could get to it, and apparently no news could come from it. For the
+moment, at any rate, I found it impossible to get in touch with the
+place.
+
+My enquiries about Mlle. Malo were equally unfruitful. I went to the
+address Rechamp had given me, somewhere off in Passy, among gardens, in
+what they call a "Square," no doubt because it's oblong: a kind of long
+narrow court with aesthetic-looking studio buildings round it. Mlle.
+Malo lived in one of them, on the top floor, the concierge said, and
+I looked up and saw a big studio window, and a roof-terrace with dead
+gourds dangling from a pergola. But she wasn't there, she hadn't been
+there, and they had no news of her. I wrote to Rechamp of my double
+failure, he sent me back a line of thanks; and after that for a long
+while I heard no more of him.
+
+By the beginning of November the enemy's hold had begun to loosen in the
+Argonne and along the Vosges, and one day we were sent off to the
+East with a couple of ambulances. Of course we had to have military
+chauffeurs, and the one attached to my ambulance happened to be a fellow
+I knew. The day before we started, in talking over our route with him,
+I said: "I suppose we can manage to get to Rechamp now?" He looked
+puzzled--it was such a little place that he'd forgotten the name. "Why
+do you want to get there?" he wondered. I told him, and he gave an
+exclamation. "Good God! Of course--but how extraordinary! Jean de
+Rechamp's here now, in Paris, too lame for the front, and driving
+a motor." We stared at each other, and he went on: "He must take my
+place--he must go with you. I don't know how it can be done; but done it
+shall be."
+
+Done it was, and the next morning at daylight I found Jean de Rechamp at
+the wheel of my car. He looked another fellow from the wreck I had left
+in the Flemish hospital; all made over, and burning with activity, but
+older, and with lines about his eyes. He had had news from his people in
+the interval, and had learned that they were still at Rechamp, and well.
+What was more surprising was that Mlle. Malo was with them--had never
+left. Alain had been got away to England, where he remained; but none of
+the others had budged. They had fitted up an ambulance in the chateau,
+and Mlle. Malo and the little sister were nursing the wounded. There
+were not many details in the letters, and they had been a long time on
+the way; but their tone was so reassuring that Jean could give himself
+up to unclouded anticipation. You may fancy if he was grateful for the
+chance I was giving him; for of course he couldn't have seen his people
+in any other way.
+
+Our permits, as you know, don't as a rule let us into the firing-line:
+we only take supplies to second-line ambulances, and carry back the
+badly wounded in need of delicate operations. So I wasn't in the least
+sure we should be allowed to go to Rechamp--though I had made up my mind
+to get there, anyhow.
+
+We were about a fortnight on the way, coming and going in Champagne and
+the Argonne, and that gave us time to get to know each other. It was
+bitter cold, and after our long runs over the lonely frozen hills we
+used to crawl into the cafe of the inn--if there was one--and talk and
+talk. We put up in fairly rough places, generally in a farm house or a
+cottage packed with soldiers; for the villages have all remained empty
+since the autumn, except when troops are quartered in them. Usually, to
+keep warm, we had to go up after supper to the room we shared, and
+get under the blankets with our clothes on. Once some jolly Sisters
+of Charity took us in at their Hospice, and we slept two nights in
+an ice-cold whitewashed cell--but what tales we heard around their
+kitchen-fire! The Sisters had stayed alone to face the Germans, had seen
+the town burn, and had made the Teutons turn the hose on the singed
+roof of their Hospice and beat the fire back from it. It's a pity those
+Sisters of Charity can't marry....
+
+Rechamp told me a lot in those days. I don't believe he was talkative
+before the war, but his long weeks in hospital, starving for news, had
+unstrung him. And then he was mad with excitement at getting back to his
+own place. In the interval he'd heard how other people caught in their
+country-houses had fared--you know the stories we all refused to believe
+at first, and that we now prefer not to think about.... Well, he'd been
+thinking about those stories pretty steadily for some months; and he
+kept repeating: "My people say they're all right--but they give no
+details."
+
+"You see," he explained, "there never were such helpless beings. Even if
+there had been time to leave, they couldn't have done it. My mother
+had been having one of her worst attacks of rheumatism--she was in bed,
+helpless, when I left. And my grandmother, who is a demon of activity in
+the house, won't stir out of it. We haven't been able to coax her into
+the garden for years. She says it's draughty; and you know how we all
+feel about draughts! As for my father, he hasn't had to decide anything
+since the Comte de Chambord refused to adopt the tricolour. My father
+decided that he was right, and since then there has been nothing
+particular for him to take a stand about. But I know how he behaved just
+as well as if I'd been there--he kept saying: 'One must act--one
+must act!' and sitting in his chair and doing nothing. Oh, I'm not
+disrespectful: they were _like_ that in his generation! Besides--it's
+better to laugh at things, isn't it?" And suddenly his face would
+darken....
+
+On the whole, however, his spirits were good till we began to traverse
+the line of ruined towns between Sainte Menehould and Bar-le-Duc. "This
+is the way the devils came," he kept saying to me; and I saw he was hard
+at work picturing the work they must have done in his own neighbourhood.
+
+"But since your sister writes that your people are safe!"
+
+"They may have made her write that to reassure me. They'd heard I was
+badly wounded. And, mind you, there's never been a line from my mother."
+
+"But you say your mother's hands are so lame that she can't hold a pen.
+And wouldn't Mlle. Malo have written you the truth?"
+
+At that his frown would lift. "Oh, yes. She would despise any attempt at
+concealment."
+
+"Well, then--what the deuce is the matter?"
+
+"It's when I see these devils' traces--" he could only mutter.
+
+One day, when we had passed through a particularly devastated little
+place, and had got from the cure some more than usually abominable
+details of things done there, Rechamp broke out to me over the
+kitchen-fire of our night's lodging. "When I hear things like that I
+don't believe anybody who tells me my people are all right!"
+
+"But you know well enough," I insisted, "that the Germans are not all
+alike--that it all depends on the particular officer...."
+
+"Yes, yes, I know," he assented, with a visible effort at impartiality.
+"Only, you see--as one gets nearer...." He went on to say that, when he
+had been sent from the ambulance at the front to a hospital at Moulins,
+he had been for a day or two in a ward next to some wounded German
+soldiers--bad cases, they were--and had heard them talking. They didn't
+know he knew German, and he had heard things.... There was one name
+always coming back in their talk, von Scharlach, Oberst von Scharlach.
+One of them, a young fellow, said: "I wish now I'd cut my hand off
+rather than do what he told us to that night.... Every time the fever
+comes I see it all again. I wish I'd been struck dead first." They all
+said "Scharlach" with a kind of terror in their voices, as if he might
+hear them even there, and come down on them horribly. Rechamp had asked
+where their regiment came from, and had been told: From the Vosges.
+That had set his brain working, and whenever he saw a ruined village, or
+heard a tale of savagery, the Scharlach nerve began to quiver. At such
+times it was no use reminding him that the Germans had had at least
+three hundred thousand men in the East in August. He simply didn't
+listen....
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+The day before we started for Rechamp his spirits flew up again, and
+that night he became confidential. "You've been such a friend to me that
+there are certain things--seeing what's ahead of us--that I should like
+to explain"; and, noticing my surprise, he went on: "I mean about my
+people. The state of mind in my _milieu_ must be so remote from anything
+you're used to in your happy country.... But perhaps I can make you
+understand...."
+
+I saw that what he wanted was to talk to me of the girl he was engaged
+to. Mlle. Malo, left an orphan at ten, had been the ward of a neighbour
+of the Rechamps', a chap with an old name and a starred chateau, who
+had lost almost everything else at baccarat before he was forty, and had
+repented, had the gout and studied agriculture for the rest of his life.
+The girl's father was a rather brilliant painter, who died young, and
+her mother, who followed him in a year or two, was a Pole: you may fancy
+that, with such antecedents, the girl was just the mixture to shake down
+quietly into French country life with a gouty and repentant guardian.
+The Marquis de Corvenaire--that was his name--brought her down to his
+place, got an old maid sister to come and stay, and really, as far as
+one knows, brought his ward up rather decently.
+
+Now and then she used to be driven over to play with the young Rechamps,
+and Jean remembered her as an ugly little girl in a plaid frock, who
+used to invent wonderful games and get tired of playing them just as the
+other children were beginning to learn how. But her domineering ways
+and searching questions did not meet with his mother's approval, and her
+visits were not encouraged. When she was seventeen her guardian died
+and left her a little money. The maiden sister had gone dotty, there was
+nobody to look after Yvonne, and she went to Paris, to an aunt, broke
+loose from the aunt when she came of age, set up her studio, travelled,
+painted, played the violin, knew lots of people; and never laid eyes on
+Jean de Rechamp till about a year before the war, when her guardian's
+place was sold, and she had to go down there to see about her interest
+in the property.
+
+The old Rechamps heard she was coming, but didn't ask her to stay.
+Jean drove over to the shut-up chateau, however, and found Mlle. Malo
+lunching on a corner of the kitchen table. She exclaimed: "My little
+Jean!" flew to him with a kiss for each cheek, and made him sit down and
+share her omelet.... The ugly little girl had shed her chrysalis--and
+you may fancy if he went back once or twice!
+
+Mlle. Malo was staying at the chateau all alone, with the farmer's wife
+to come in and cook her dinner: not a soul in the house at night but
+herself and her brindled sheep dog. She had to be there a week, and
+Jean suggested to his people to ask her to Rechamp. But at Rechamp they
+hesitated, coughed, looked away, said the sparerooms were all upside
+down, and the valet-de-chambre laid up with the mumps, and the cook
+short-handed--till finally the irrepressible grandmother broke out: "A
+young girl who chooses to live alone--probably prefers to live alone!"
+
+There was a deadly silence, and Jean did not raise the question again;
+but I can imagine his blue eyes getting obstinate.
+
+Soon after Mlle. Malo's return to Paris he followed her and began to
+frequent the Passy studio. The life there was unlike anything he had
+ever seen--or conceived as possible, short of the prairies. He had
+sampled the usual varieties of French womankind, and explored most
+of the social layers; but he had missed the newest, that of the
+artistic-emancipated. I don't know much about that set myself, but from
+his descriptions I should say they were a good deal like intelligent
+Americans, except that they don't seem to keep art and life in such
+water-tight compartments. But his great discovery was the new girl.
+Apparently he had never before known any but the traditional type, which
+predominates in the provinces, and still persists, he tells me, in the
+last fastnesses of the Faubourg St. Germain. The girl who comes and goes
+as she pleases, reads what she likes, has opinions about what she reads,
+who talks, looks, behaves with the independence of a married woman--and
+yet has kept the Diana-freshness--think how she must have shaken up
+such a man's inherited view of things! Mlle. Malo did far more than make
+Rechamp fall in love with her: she turned his world topsy-turvey,
+and prevented his ever again squeezing himself into his little old
+pigeon-hole of prejudices.
+
+Before long they confessed their love--just like any young couple of
+Anglo-Saxons--and Jean went down to Rechamp to ask permission to marry
+her. Neither you nor I can quite enter into the state of mind of a young
+man of twenty-seven who has knocked about all over the globe, and
+been in and out of the usual sentimental coils--and who has to ask his
+parents' leave to get married! Don't let us try: it's no use. We should
+only end by picturing him as an incorrigible ninny. But there isn't a
+man in France who wouldn't feel it his duty to take that step, as Jean
+de Rechamp did. All we can do is to accept the premise and pass on.
+
+Well--Jean went down and asked his father and his mother and his old
+grandmother if they would permit him to marry Mlle. Malo; and they all
+with one voice said they wouldn't. There was an uproar, in fact; and the
+old grandmother contributed the most piercing note to the concert. Marry
+Mlle. Malo! A young girl who lived alone! Travelled! Spent her time with
+foreigners--with musicians and painters! _A young girl!_ Of course, if
+she had been a married woman--that is, a widow--much as they would have
+preferred a young girl for Jean, or even, if widow it had to be, a widow
+of another type--still, it was conceivable that, out of affection for
+him, they might have resigned themselves to his choice. But a young
+girl--bring such a young girl to Rechamp! Ask them to receive her under
+the same roof with their little Simone, their innocent Alain....
+
+He had a bad hour of it; but he held his own, keeping silent while
+they screamed, and stiffening as they began to wobble from exhaustion.
+Finally he took his mother apart, and tried to reason with her. His
+arguments were not much use, but his resolution impressed her, and he
+saw it. As for his father, nobody was afraid of Monsieur de Rechamp.
+When he said: "Never--never while I live, and there is a roof on
+Rechamp!" they all knew he had collapsed inside. But the grandmother
+was terrible. She was terrible because she was so old, and so clever
+at taking advantage of it. She could bring on a valvular heart attack by
+just sitting still and holding her breath, as Jean and his mother had
+long since found out; and she always treated them to one when things
+weren't going as she liked. Madame de Rechamp promised Jean that she
+would intercede with her mother-in-law; but she hadn't much faith in
+the result, and when she came out of the old lady's room she whispered:
+"She's just sitting there holding her breath."
+
+The next day Jean himself advanced to the attack. His grandmother was
+the most intelligent member of the family, and she knew he knew it, and
+liked him for having found it out; so when he had her alone she listened
+to him without resorting to any valvular tricks. "Of course," he
+explained, "you're much too clever not to understand that the times have
+changed, and manners with them, and that what a woman was criticised for
+doing yesterday she is ridiculed for not doing to-day. Nearly all the
+old social thou-shalt-nots have gone: intelligent people nowadays don't
+give a fig for them, and that simple fact has abolished them. They
+only existed as long as there was some one left for them to scare." His
+grandmother listened with a sparkle of admiration in her ancient eyes.
+"And of course," Jean pursued, "that can't be the real reason for your
+opposing my marriage--a marriage with a young girl you've always known,
+who has been received here--"
+
+"Ah, that's it--we've always known her!" the old lady snapped him up.
+
+"What of that? I don't see--"
+
+"Of course you don't. You're here so little: you don't hear things...."
+
+"What things?"
+
+"Things in the air... that blow about.... You were doing your military
+service at the time...."
+
+"At what time?"
+
+She leaned forward and laid a warning hand on his arm. "Why did
+Corvenaire leave her all that money--_why?_"
+
+"But why not--why shouldn't he?" Jean stammered, indignant. Then she
+unpacked her bag--a heap of vague insinuations, baseless conjectures,
+village tattle, all, at the last analysis, based, as he succeeded
+in proving, and making her own, on a word launched at random by a
+discharged maid-servant who had retailed her grievance to the cure's
+housekeeper. "Oh, she does what she likes with Monsieur le Marquis, the
+young miss! _She_ knows how...." On that single phrase the neighbourhood
+had raised a slander built of adamant.
+
+Well, I'll give you an idea of what a determined fellow Rechamp is, when
+I tell you he pulled it down--or thought he did. He kept his temper,
+hunted up the servant's record, proved her a liar and dishonest, cast
+grave doubts on the discretion of the cure's housekeeper, and poured
+such a flood of ridicule over the whole flimsy fable, and those who
+had believed in it, that in sheer shamefacedness at having based her
+objection on such grounds, his grandmother gave way, and brought his
+parents toppling down with her.
+
+All this happened a few weeks before the war, and soon afterward Mlle.
+Malo came down to Rechamp. Jean had insisted on her coming: he wanted
+her presence there, as his betrothed, to be known to the neighbourhood.
+As for her, she seemed delighted to come. I could see from Rechamp's
+tone, when he reached this part of his story, that he rather thought I
+should expect its heroine to have shown a becoming reluctance--to
+have stood on her dignity. He was distinctly relieved when he found I
+expected no such thing.
+
+"She's simplicity itself--it's her great quality. Vain complications
+don't exist for her, because she doesn't see them... that's what my
+people can't be made to understand...."
+
+I gathered from the last phrase that the visit had not been a complete
+success, and this explained his having let out, when he first told me
+of his fears for his family, that he was sure Mlle. Malo would not have
+remained at Rechamp if she could help it. Oh, no, decidedly, the visit
+was not a success....
+
+"You see," he explained with a half-embarrassed smile, "it was partly
+her fault. Other girls as clever, but less--how shall I say?--less
+proud, would have adapted themselves, arranged things, avoided startling
+allusions. She wouldn't stoop to that; she talked to my family as
+naturally as she did to me. You can imagine for instance, the effect of
+her saying: 'One night, after a supper at Montmartre, I was walking home
+with two or three pals'--. It was her way of affirming her convictions,
+and I adored her for it--but I wished she wouldn't!"
+
+And he depicted, to my joy, the neighbours rumbling over to call in
+heraldic barouches (the mothers alone--with embarrassed excuses for not
+bringing their daughters), and the agony of not knowing, till they were
+in the room, if Yvonne would receive them with lowered lids and folded
+hands, sitting by in a _pose de fiancee_ while the elders talked; or
+if she would take the opportunity to air her views on the separation of
+Church and State, or the necessity of making divorce easier. "It's not,"
+he explained, "that she really takes much interest in such questions:
+she's much more absorbed in her music and painting. But anything her
+eye lights on sets her mind dancing--as she said to me once: 'It's your
+mother's friends' bonnets that make me stand up for divorce!'" He broke
+off abruptly to add: "Good God, how far off all that nonsense seems!"
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+The next day we started for Rechamp, not sure if we could get through,
+but bound to, anyhow! It was the coldest day we'd had, the sky steel,
+the earth iron, and a snow-wind howling down on us from the north. The
+Vosges are splendid in winter. In summer they are just plump puddingy
+hills; when the wind strips them they turn to mountains. And we seemed
+to have the whole country to ourselves--the black firs, the blue
+shadows, the beech-woods cracking and groaning like rigging, the bursts
+of snowy sunlight from cold clouds. Not a soul in sight except the
+sentinels guarding the railways, muffled to the eyes, or peering out
+of their huts of pine-boughs at the cross-roads. Every now and then we
+passed a long string of seventy-fives, or a train of supply waggons or
+army ambulances, and at intervals a cavalryman cantered by, his cloak
+bellied out by the gale; but of ordinary people about the common jobs of
+life, not a sign.
+
+The sense of loneliness and remoteness that the absence of the civil
+population produces everywhere in eastern France is increased by the
+fact that all the names and distances on the mile-stones have been
+scratched out and the sign-posts at the cross-roads thrown down. It was
+done, presumably, to throw the enemy off the track in September: and the
+signs have never been put back. The result is that one is forever losing
+one's way, for the soldiers quartered in the district know only the
+names of their particular villages, and those on the march can tell you
+nothing about the places they are passing through. We had got badly
+off our road several times during the trip, but on the last day's run
+Rechamp was in his own country, and knew every yard of the way--or
+thought he did. We had turned off the main road, and were running along
+between rather featureless fields and woods, crossed by a good many
+wood-roads with nothing to distinguish them; but he continued to push
+ahead, saying:
+
+"We don't turn till we get to a manor-house on a stream, with a big
+paper-mill across the road." He went on to tell me that the mill-owners
+lived in the manor, and were old friends of his people: good old local
+stock, who had lived there for generations and done a lot for the
+neighbourhood.
+
+"It's queer I don't see their village-steeple from this rise. The
+village is just beyond the house. How the devil could I have missed the
+turn?" We ran on a little farther, and suddenly he stopped the motor
+with a jerk. We were at a cross-road, with a stream running under the
+bank on our right. The place looked like an abandoned stoneyard. I never
+saw completer ruin. To the left, a fortified gate gaped on emptiness; to
+the right, a mill-wheel hung in the stream. Everything else was as flat
+as your dinner-table.
+
+"Was this what you were trying to see from that rise?" I asked; and I
+saw a tear or two running down his face.
+
+"They were the kindest people: their only son got himself shot the first
+month in Champagne--"
+
+He had jumped out of the car and was standing staring at the level
+waste. "The house was there--there was a splendid lime in the court. I
+used to sit under it and have a glass of _vin cris de Lorraine_ with the
+old people.... Over there, where that cinder-heap is, all their children
+are buried." He walked across to the grave-yard under a blackened
+wall--a bit of the apse of the vanished church--and sat down on a
+grave-stone. "If the devils have done this _here_--so close to us," he
+burst out, and covered his face.
+
+An old woman walked toward us down the road. Rechamp jumped up and ran
+to meet her. "Why, Marie Jeanne, what are you doing in these ruins?" The
+old woman looked at him with unastonished eyes. She seemed incapable of
+any surprise. "They left my house standing. I'm glad to see Monsieur,"
+she simply said. We followed her to the one house left in the waste of
+stones. It was a two-roomed cottage, propped against a cow-stable,
+but fairly decent, with a curtain in the window and a cat on the sill.
+Rechamp caught me by the arm and pointed to the door-panel. "Oberst von
+Scharlach" was scrawled on it. He turned as white as your table-cloth,
+and hung on to me a minute; then he spoke to the old woman. "The
+officers were quartered here: that was the reason they spared your
+house?"
+
+She nodded. "Yes: I was lucky. But the gentlemen must come in and have a
+mouthful."
+
+Rechamp's finger was on the name. "And this one--this was their
+commanding officer?"
+
+"I suppose so. Is it somebody's name?" She had evidently never
+speculated on the meaning of the scrawl that had saved her.
+
+"You remember him--their captain? Was his name Scharlach?" Rechamp
+persisted.
+
+Under its rich weathering the old woman's face grew as pale as his.
+"Yes, that was his name--I heard it often enough."
+
+"Describe him, then. What was he like? Tall and fair? They're all
+that--but what else? What in particular?"
+
+She hesitated, and then said: "This one wasn't fair. He was dark, and
+had a scar that drew up the left corner of his mouth."
+
+Rechamp turned to me. "It's the same. I heard the men describing him at
+Moulins."
+
+We followed the old woman into the house, and while she gave us some
+bread and wine she told us about the wrecking of the village and the
+factory. It was one of the most damnable stories I've heard yet. Put
+together the worst of the typical horrors and you'll have a fair idea of
+it. Murder, outrage, torture: Scharlach's programme seemed to be
+fairly comprehensive. She ended off by saying: "His orderly showed me a
+silver-mounted flute he always travelled with, and a beautiful paint-box
+mounted in silver too. Before he left he sat down on my door-step and
+made a painting of the ruins...."
+
+Soon after leaving this place of death we got to the second lines and
+our troubles began. We had to do a lot of talking to get through the
+lines, but what Rechamp had just seen had made him eloquent.
+Luckily, too, the ambulance doctor, a charming fellow, was short of
+tetanus-serum, and I had some left; and while I went over with him to
+the pine-branch hut where he hid his wounded I explained Rechamp's
+case, and implored him to get us through. Finally it was settled that
+we should leave the ambulance there--for in the lines the ban against
+motors is absolute--and drive the remaining twelve miles. A sergeant
+fished out of a farmhouse a toothless old woman with a furry horse
+harnessed to a two-wheeled trap, and we started off by round-about
+wood-tracks. The horse was in no hurry, nor the old lady either; for
+there were bits of road that were pretty steadily currycombed by shell,
+and it was to everybody's interest not to cross them before twilight.
+Jean de Rechamp's excitement seemed to have dropped: he sat beside me
+dumb as a fish, staring straight ahead of him. I didn't feel talkative
+either, for a word the doctor had let drop had left me thinking. "That
+poor old granny mind the shells? Not she!" he had said when our crazy
+chariot drove up. "She doesn't know them from snow-flakes any more.
+Nothing matters to her now, except trying to outwit a German. They're
+all like that where Scharlach's been--you've heard of him? She had only
+one boy--half-witted: he cocked a broomhandle at them, and they burnt
+him. Oh, she'll take you to Rechamp safe enough."
+
+"Where Scharlach's been"--so he had been as close as this to Rechamp! I
+was wondering if Jean knew it, and if that had sealed his lips and given
+him that flinty profile. The old horse's woolly flanks jogged on under
+the bare branches and the old woman's bent back jogged in time with it.
+She never once spoke or looked around at us. "It isn't the noise we
+make that'll give us away," I said at last; and just then the old woman
+turned her head and pointed silently with the osier-twig she used as a
+whip. Just ahead of us lay a heap of ruins: the wreck, apparently, of
+a great chateau and its dependencies. "Lermont!" Rechamp exclaimed,
+turning white. He made a motion to jump out and then dropped back into
+the seat. "What's the use?" he muttered. He leaned forward and touched
+the old woman's shoulder.
+
+"I hadn't heard of this--when did it happen?"
+
+"In September."
+
+"_They_ did it?"
+
+"Yes. Our wounded were there. It's like this everywhere in our country."
+
+I saw Jean stiffening himself for the next question. "At Rechamp, too?"
+
+She relapsed into indifference. "I haven't been as far as Rechamp."
+
+"But you must have seen people who'd been there--you must have heard."
+
+"I've heard the masters were still there--so there must be something
+standing. Maybe though," she reflected, "they're in the cellars...."
+
+We continued to jog on through the dusk.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+"There's the steeple!" Rechamp burst out.
+
+Through the dimness I couldn't tell which way to look; but I suppose in
+the thickest midnight he would have known where he was. He jumped from
+the trap and took the old horse by the bridle. I made out that he was
+guiding us into a long village street edged by houses in which
+every light was extinguished. The snow on the ground sent up a pale
+reflection, and I began to see the gabled outline of the houses and
+the steeple at the head of the street. The place seemed as calm and
+unchanged as if the sound of war had never reached it. In the open space
+at the end of the village Rechamp checked the horse.
+
+"The elm--there's the old elm in front of the church!" he shouted in
+a voice like a boy's. He ran back and caught me by both hands. "It was
+true, then--nothing's touched!" The old woman asked: "Is this Rechamp?"
+and he went back to the horse's head and turned the trap toward a tall
+gate between park walls. The gate was barred and padlocked, and not a
+gleam showed through the shutters of the porter's lodge; but Rechamp,
+after listening a minute or two, gave a low call twice repeated, and
+presently the lodge door opened, and an old man peered out. Well--I
+leave you to brush in the rest. Old family servant, tears and hugs and
+so on. I know you affect to scorn the cinema, and this was it, tremolo
+and all. Hang it! This war's going to teach us not to be afraid of the
+obvious.
+
+We piled into the trap and drove down a long avenue to the house. Black
+as the grave, of course; but in another minute the door opened, and
+there, in the hall, was another servant, screening a light--and then
+more doors opened on another cinema-scene: fine old drawing-room with
+family portraits, shaded lamp, domestic group about the fire. They
+evidently thought it was the servant coming to announce dinner, and
+not a head turned at our approach. I could see them all over Jean's
+shoulder: a grey-haired lady knitting with stiff fingers, an old
+gentleman with a high nose and a weak chin sitting in a big carved
+armchair and looking more like a portrait than the portraits; a pretty
+girl at his feet, with a dog's head in her lap, and another girl, who
+had a Red Cross on her sleeve, at the table with a book. She had been
+reading aloud in a rich veiled voice, and broke off her last phrase
+to say: "Dinner...." Then she looked up and saw Jean. Her dark face
+remained perfectly calm, but she lifted her hand in a just perceptible
+gesture of warning, and instantly understanding he drew back and pushed
+the servant forward in his place.
+
+"Madame la Comtesse--it is some one outside asking for Mademoiselle."
+
+The dark girl jumped up and ran out into the hall. I remember wondering:
+"Is it because she wants to have him to herself first--or because she's
+afraid of their being startled?" I wished myself out of the way, but she
+took no notice of me, and going straight to Jean flung her arms about
+him. I was behind him and could see her hands about his neck, and
+her brown fingers tightly locked. There wasn't much doubt about those
+two....
+
+The next minute she caught sight of me, and I was being rapidly tested
+by a pair of the finest eyes I ever saw--I don't apply the term to their
+setting, though that was fine too, but to the look itself, a look at
+once warm and resolute, all-promising and all-penetrating. I really
+can't do with fewer adjectives....
+
+Rechamp explained me, and she was full of thanks and welcome; not
+excessive, but--well, I don't know--eloquent! She gave every intonation
+all it could carry, and without the least emphasis: that's the wonder.
+
+She went back to "prepare" the parents, as they say in melodrama; and
+in a minute or two we followed. What struck me first was that these
+insignificant and inadequate people had the command of the grand
+gesture--had _la ligne_. The mother had laid aside her knitting--_not_
+dropped it--and stood waiting with open arms. But even in clasping
+her son she seemed to include me in her welcome. I don't know how to
+describe it; but they never let me feel I was in the way. I suppose
+that's part of what you call distinction; knowing instinctively how to
+deal with unusual moments.
+
+All the while, I was looking about me at the fine secure old room, in
+which nothing seemed altered or disturbed, the portraits smiling from
+the walls, the servants beaming in the doorway--and wondering how such
+things could have survived in the trail of death and havoc we had been
+following.
+
+The same thought had evidently struck Jean, for he dropped his sister's
+hand and turned to gaze about him too.
+
+"Then nothing's touched--nothing? I don't understand," he stammered.
+
+Monsieur de Rechamp raised himself majestically from his chair,
+crossed the room and lifted Yvonne Malo's hand to his lips. "Nothing is
+touched--thanks to this hand and this brain."
+
+Madame de Rechamp was shining on her son through tears. "Ah, yes--we owe
+it all to Yvonne."
+
+"All, all! Grandmamma will tell you!" Simone chimed in; and Yvonne,
+brushing aside their praise with a half-impatient laugh, said to her
+betrothed: "But your grandmother! You must go up to her at once."
+
+A wonderful specimen, that grandmother: I was taken to see her after
+dinner. She sat by the fire in a bare panelled bedroom, bolt upright
+in an armchair with ears, a knitting-table at her elbow with a shaded
+candle on it.
+
+She was even more withered and ancient than she looked in her
+photograph, and I judge she'd never been pretty; but she somehow made
+me feel as if I'd got through with prettiness. I don't know exactly what
+she reminded me of: a dried bouquet, or something rich and clovy that
+had turned brittle through long keeping in a sandal-wood box. I suppose
+her sandal-wood box had been Good Society. Well, I had a rare evening
+with her. Jean and his parents were called down to see the cure, who had
+hurried over to the chateau when he heard of the young man's arrival;
+and the old lady asked me to stay on and chat with her. She related
+their experiences with uncanny detachment, seeming chiefly to resent
+the indignity of having been made to descend into the cellar--"to avoid
+French shells, if you'll believe it: the Germans had the decency not to
+bombard us," she observed impartially. I was so struck by the absence
+of rancour in her tone that finally, out of sheer curiosity, I made
+an allusion to the horror of having the enemy under one's roof. "Oh,
+I might almost say I didn't see them," she returned. "I never go
+downstairs any longer; and they didn't do me the honour of coming beyond
+my door. A glance sufficed them--an old woman like me!" she added with a
+phosphorescent gleam of coquetry.
+
+"But they searched the chateau, surely?" "Oh, a mere form; they were
+very decent--very decent," she almost snapped at me. "There was a first
+moment, of course, when we feared it might be hard to get Monsieur de
+Rechamp away with my young grandson; but Mlle. Malo managed that very
+cleverly. They slipped off while the officers were dining." She looked
+at me with the smile of some arch old lady in a Louis XV pastel. "My
+grandson Jean's fiancee is a very clever young woman: in my time no
+young girl would have been so sure of herself, so cool and quick. After
+all, there is something to be said for the new way of bringing up girls.
+My poor daughter-in-law, at Yvonne's age, was a bleating baby: she is so
+still, at times. The convent doesn't develop character. I'm glad Yvonne
+was not brought up in a convent." And this champion of tradition smiled
+on me more intensely.
+
+Little by little I got from her the story of the German approach: the
+distracted fugitives pouring in from the villages north of Rechamp, the
+sound of distant cannonading, and suddenly, the next afternoon, after a
+reassuring lull, the sight of a single spiked helmet at the end of the
+drive. In a few minutes a dozen followed: mostly officers; then all at
+once the place hummed with them. There were supply waggons and motors in
+the court, bundles of hay, stacks of rifles, artillery-men unharnessing
+and rubbing down their horses. The crowd was hot and thirsty, and in a
+moment the old lady, to her amazement, saw wine and cider being handed
+about by the Rechamp servants. "Or so at least I was told," she added,
+correcting herself, "for it's not my habit to look out of the window. I
+simply sat here and waited." Her seat, as she spoke, might have been a
+curule chair.
+
+Downstairs, it appeared, Mlle. Malo had instantly taken her measures.
+_She_ didn't sit and wait. Surprised in the garden with Simone, she had
+made the girl walk quietly back to the house and receive the officers
+with her on the doorstep. The officer in command--captain, or whatever
+he was--had arrived in a bad temper, cursing and swearing, and growling
+out menaces about spies. The day was intensely hot, and possibly he had
+had too much wine. At any rate Mlle. Malo had known how to "put him in
+his place"; and when he and the other officers entered they found
+the dining-table set out with refreshing drinks and cigars, melons,
+strawberries and iced coffee. "The clever creature! She even remembered
+that they liked whipped cream with their coffee!"
+
+The effect had been miraculous. The captain--what was his name? Yes,
+Chariot, Chariot--Captain Chariot had been specially complimentary on
+the subject of the whipped cream and the cigars. Then he asked to see
+the other members of the family, and Mlle. Malo told him there were only
+two--two old women! "He made a face at that, and said all the same he
+should like to meet them; and she answered: 'One is your hostess, the
+Comtesse de Rechamp, who is ill in bed'--for my poor daughter-in-law
+was lying in bed paralyzed with rheumatism--'and the other her
+mother-in-law, a very old lady who never leaves her room.'"
+
+"But aren't there any men in the family?" he had then asked; and she had
+said: "Oh yes--two. The Comte de Rechamp and his son."
+
+"And where are they?"
+
+"In England. Monsieur de Rechamp went a month ago to take his son on a
+trip."
+
+The officer said: "I was told they were here to-day"; and Mlle. Malo
+replied: "You had better have the house searched and satisfy yourself."
+
+He laughed and said: "The idea _had_ occurred to me." She laughed also,
+and sitting down at the piano struck a few chords. Captain Chariot, who
+had his foot on the threshold, turned back--Simone had described the
+scene to her grandmother afterward. "Some of the brutes, it seems, are
+musical," the old lady explained; "and this was one of them. While he
+was listening, some soldiers appeared in the court carrying another who
+seemed to be wounded. It turned out afterward that he'd been climbing a
+garden wall after fruit, and cut himself on the broken glass at the top;
+but the blood was enough--they raised the usual dreadful outcry about
+an ambush, and a lieutenant clattered into the room where Mlle. Malo
+sat playing Stravinsky." The old lady paused for her effect, and I was
+conscious of giving her all she wanted.
+
+"Well--?"
+
+"Will you believe it? It seems she looked at her watch-bracelet and said:
+'Do you gentlemen dress for dinner? _I_ do--but we've still time for a
+little Moussorgsky'--or whatever wild names they call themselves--'if
+you'll make those people outside hold their tongues.' Our captain looked
+at her again, laughed, gave an order that sent the lieutenant right
+about, and sat down beside her at the piano. Imagine my stupour, dear
+sir: the drawing-room is directly under this room, and in a moment I
+heard two voices coming up to me. Well, I won't conceal from you that
+his was the finest. But then I always adored a barytone." She folded her
+shrivelled hands among their laces. "After that, the Germans were
+_tres bien--tres bien_. They stayed two days, and there was nothing to
+complain of. Indeed, when the second detachment came, a week later, they
+never even entered the gates. Orders had been left that they should be
+quartered elsewhere. Of course we were lucky in happening on a man of
+the world like Captain Chariot."
+
+"Yes, very lucky. It's odd, though, his having a French name."
+
+"Very. It probably accounts for his breeding," she answered placidly;
+and left me marvelling at the happy remoteness of old age.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+The next morning early Jean de Rechamp came to my room. I was struck
+at once by the change in him: he had lost his first glow, and seemed
+nervous and hesitating. I knew what he had come for: to ask me to
+postpone our departure for another twenty-four hours. By rights we
+should have been off that morning; but there had been a sharp brush a
+few kilometres away, and a couple of poor devils had been brought to
+the chateau whom it would have been death to carry farther that day and
+criminal not to hurry to a base hospital the next morning. "We've simply
+_got_ to stay till to-morrow: you're in luck," I said laughing.
+
+He laughed back, but with a frown that made me feel I had been a brute
+to speak in that way of a respite due to such a cause.
+
+"The men will pull through, you know--trust Mlle. Malo for that!" I
+said.
+
+His frown did not lift. He went to the window and drummed on the pane.
+
+"Do you see that breach in the wall, down there behind the trees?
+It's the only scratch the place has got. And think of Lennont! It's
+incredible--simply incredible!"
+
+"But it's like that everywhere, isn't it? Everything depends on the
+officer in command."
+
+"Yes: that's it, I suppose. I haven't had time to get a consecutive
+account of what happened: they're all too excited. Mlle. Malo is the
+only person who can tell me exactly how things went." He swung about on
+me. "Look here, it sounds absurd, what I'm asking; but try to get me an
+hour alone with her, will you?"
+
+I stared at the request, and he went on, still half-laughing: "You
+see, they all hang on me; my father and mother, Simone, the cure, the
+servants. The whole village is coming up presently: they want to stuff
+their eyes full of me. It's natural enough, after living here all these
+long months cut off from everything. But the result is I haven't said
+two words to her yet."
+
+"Well, you shall," I declared; and with an easier smile he turned to
+hurry down to a mass of thanksgiving which the cure was to celebrate
+in the private chapel. "My parents wanted it," he explained; "and after
+that the whole village will be upon us. But later--"
+
+"Later I'll effect a diversion; I swear I will," I assured him.
+
+*****
+
+By daylight, decidedly, Mlle. Malo was less handsome than in the
+evening. It was my first thought as she came toward me, that afternoon,
+under the limes. Jean was still indoors, with his people, receiving
+the village; I rather wondered she hadn't stayed there with him.
+Theoretically, her place was at his side; but I knew she was a young
+woman who didn't live by rule, and she had already struck me as having a
+distaste for superfluous expenditures of feeling.
+
+Yes, she was less effective by day. She looked older for one thing; her
+face was pinched, and a little sallow and for the first time I noticed
+that her cheek-bones were too high. Her eyes, too, had lost their velvet
+depth: fine eyes still, but not unfathomable. But the smile with
+which she greeted me was charming: it ran over her tired face like a
+lamp-lighter kindling flames as he runs.
+
+"I was looking for you," she said. "Shall we have a little talk? The
+reception is sure to last another hour: every one of the villagers is
+going to tell just what happened to him or her when the Germans came."
+
+"And you've run away from the ceremony?"
+
+"I'm a trifle tired of hearing the same adventures retold," she said,
+still smiling.
+
+"But I thought there _were_ no adventures--that that was the wonder of
+it?"
+
+She shrugged. "It makes their stories a little dull, at any rate; we've
+not a hero or a martyr to show." She had strolled farther from the house
+as we talked, leading me in the direction of a bare horse-chestnut walk
+that led toward the park.
+
+"Of course Jean's got to listen to it all, poor boy; but I needn't," she
+explained.
+
+I didn't know exactly what to answer and we walked on a little way in
+silence; then she said: "If you'd carried him off this morning he would
+have escaped all this fuss." After a pause she added slowly: "On the
+whole, it might have been as well."
+
+"To carry him off?"
+
+"Yes." She stopped and looked at me. "I wish you _would_."
+
+"Would?--Now?"
+
+"Yes, now: as soon as you can. He's really not strong yet--he's drawn
+and nervous." ("So are you," I thought.) "And the excitement is greater
+than you can perhaps imagine--"
+
+I gave her back her look. "Why, I think I _can_ imagine...."
+
+She coloured up through her sallow skin and then laughed away her blush.
+"Oh, I don't mean the excitement of seeing _me!_ But his parents, his
+grandmother, the cure, all the old associations--"
+
+I considered for a moment; then I said: "As a matter of fact, you're
+about the only person he _hasn't_ seen."
+
+She checked a quick answer on her lips, and for a moment or two we faced
+each other silently. A sudden sense of intimacy, of complicity almost,
+came over me. What was it that the girl's silence was crying out to me?
+
+"If I take him away now he won't have seen you at all," I continued.
+
+She stood under the bare trees, keeping her eyes on me. "Then take
+him away now!" she retorted; and as she spoke I saw her face change,
+decompose into deadly apprehension and as quickly regain its usual calm.
+From where she stood she faced the courtyard, and glancing in the same
+direction I saw the throng of villagers coming out of the chateau. "Take
+him away--take him away at once!" she passionately commanded; and the
+next minute Jean de Rechamp detached himself from the group and began to
+limp down the walk in our direction.
+
+What was I to do? I can't exaggerate the sense of urgency Mlle. Malo's
+appeal gave me, or my faith in her sincerity. No one who had seen her
+meeting with Rechamp the night before could have doubted her feeling for
+him: if she wanted him away it was not because she did not delight in
+his presence. Even now, as he approached, I saw her face veiled by
+a faint mist of emotion: it was like watching a fruit ripen under a
+midsummer sun. But she turned sharply from the house and began to walk
+on.
+
+"Can't you give me a hint of your reason?" I suggested as I followed.
+
+"My reason? I've given it!" I suppose I looked incredulous, for she
+added in a lower voice: "I don't want him to hear--yet--about all the
+horrors."
+
+"The horrors? I thought there had been none here."
+
+"All around us--" Her voice became a whisper. "Our friends... our
+neighbours... every one...."
+
+"He can hardly avoid hearing of that, can he? And besides, since you're
+all safe and happy.... Look here," I broke off, "he's coming after us.
+Don't we look as if we were running away?"
+
+She turned around, suddenly paler; and in a stride or two Rechamp was
+at our side. He was pale too; and before I could find a pretext for
+slipping away he had begun to speak. But I saw at once that he didn't
+know or care if I was there.
+
+"What was the name of the officer in command who was quartered here?" he
+asked, looking straight at the girl.
+
+She raised her eye-brows slightly. "Do you mean to say that after
+listening for three hours to every inhabitant of Bechamp you haven't
+found that out?"
+
+"They all call him something different. My grandmother says he had a
+French name: she calls him Chariot."
+
+"Your grandmother was never taught German: his name was the Oberst von
+Scharlach." She did not remember my presence either: the two were still
+looking straight in each other's eyes.
+
+Bechamp had grown white to the lips: he was rigid with the effort to
+control himself.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me it was Scharlach who was here?" he brought out
+at last in a low voice.
+
+She turned her eyes in my direction. "I was just explaining to Mr.
+Greer--"
+
+"To Mr. Greer?" He looked at me too, half-angrily.
+
+"I know the stories that are about," she continued quietly; "and I was
+saying to your friend that, since we had been so happy as to be spared,
+it seemed useless to dwell on what has happened elsewhere."
+
+"Damn what happened elsewhere! I don't yet know what happened here."
+
+I put a hand on his arm. Mlle. Malo was looking hard at me, but I
+wouldn't let her see I knew it. "I'm going to leave you to hear the
+whole story now," I said to Rechamp.
+
+"But there isn't any story for him to hear!" she broke in. She pointed
+at the serene front of the chateau, looking out across its gardens to
+the unscarred fields. "We're safe; the place is untouched. Why brood on
+other horrors--horrors we were powerless to help?"
+
+Rechamp held his ground doggedly. "But the man's name is a curse and an
+abomination. Wherever he went he spread ruin."
+
+"So they say. Mayn't there be a mistake? Legends grow up so quickly in
+these dreadful times. Here--" she looked about her again at the peaceful
+scene--"here he behaved as you see. For heaven's sake be content with
+that!"
+
+"Content?" He passed his hand across his forehead. "I'm blind with
+joy...or should be, if only..."
+
+She looked at me entreatingly, almost desperately, and I took hold of
+Rechamp's arm with a warning pressure.
+
+"My dear fellow, don't you see that Mlle. Malo has been under a great
+strain? _La joie fait peur_--that's the trouble with both of you!"
+
+He lowered his head. "Yes, I suppose it is." He took her hand And kissed
+it. "I beg your pardon. Greer's right: we're both on edge."
+
+"Yes: I'll leave you for a little while, if you and Mr Greer will excuse
+me." She included us both in a quiet look that seemed to me extremely
+noble, and walked slowly away toward the chateau. Rechamp stood gazing
+after her for a moment; then he dropped down on one of benches at
+the edge of the path. He covered his face with his hands.
+"Scharlach--Scharlach!" I heard him say.
+
+We sat there side by side for ten minutes or more without speaking.
+Finally I said: "Look here, Rechamp--she's right and you're wrong. I
+shall be sorry I brought you here if you don't see it before it's too
+late."
+
+His face was still hidden; but presently he dropped his hands and
+answered me. "I do see. She's saved everything for me--my, people and
+my house, and the ground we're standing on. And I worship it because she
+walks on it!"
+
+"And so do your people: the war's done that for you, anyhow," I reminded
+him.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+The morning after we were off before dawn. Our time allowance was up,
+and it was thought advisable, on account of our wounded, to slip across
+the exposed bit of road in the dark.
+
+Mlle. Malo was downstairs when we started, pale in her white dress, but
+calm and active. We had borrowed a farmer's cart in which our two men
+could be laid on a mattress, and she had stocked our trap with food and
+remedies. Nothing seemed to have been forgotten. While I was settling
+the men I suppose Rechamp turned back into the hall to bid her good-bye;
+anyhow, when she followed him out a moment later he looked quieter
+and less strained. He had taken leave of his parents and his sister
+upstairs, and Yvonne Malo stood alone in the dark driveway, watching us
+as we drove away.
+
+There was not much talk between us during our slow drive back to the
+lines. We had to go it a snail's pace, for the roads were rough; and
+there was time for meditation. I knew well enough what my companion was
+thinking about and my own thoughts ran on the same lines. Though the
+story of the German occupation of Rechamp had been retold to us a dozen
+times the main facts did not vary. There were little discrepancies of
+detail, and gaps in the narrative here and there; but all the household,
+from the astute ancestress to the last bewildered pantry-boy, were
+at one in saying that Mlle. Malo's coolness and courage had saved the
+chateau and the village. The officer in command had arrived full of
+threats and insolence: Mlle. Malo had placated and disarmed him, turned
+his suspicions to ridicule, entertained him and his comrades at dinner,
+and contrived during that time--or rather while they were making music
+afterward (which they did for half the night, it seemed)--that Monsieur
+de Rechamp and Alain should slip out of the cellar in which they had
+been hidden, gain the end of the gardens through an old hidden passage,
+and get off in the darkness. Meanwhile Simone had been safe upstairs
+with her mother and grandmother, and none of the officers lodged in the
+chateau had--after a first hasty inspection--set foot in any part of the
+house but the wing assigned to them. On the third morning they had left,
+and Scharlach, before going, had put in Mlle. Malo's hands a
+letter requesting whatever officer should follow him to show
+every consideration to the family of the Comte de Rechamp, and if
+possible--owing to the grave illness of the Countess--avoid taking up
+quarters in the chateau: a request which had been scrupulously observed.
+
+Such were the amazing but undisputed facts over which Rechamp and I, in
+our different ways, were now pondering. He hardly spoke, and when he did
+it was only to make some casual reference to the road or to our wounded
+soldiers; but all the while I sat at his side I kept hearing the echo
+of the question he was inwardly asking himself, and hoping to God he
+wouldn't put it to me....
+
+It was nearly noon when we finally reached the lines, and the men had to
+have a rest before we could start again; but a couple of hours later we
+landed them safely at the base hospital. From there we had intended
+to go back to Paris; but as we were starting there came an unexpected
+summons to another point of the front, where there had been a successful
+night-attack, and a lot of Germans taken in a blown-up trench. The place
+was fifty miles away, and off my beat, but the number of wounded on
+both sides was exceptionally heavy, and all the available ambulances had
+already started. An urgent call had come for more, and there was nothing
+for it but to go; so we went.
+
+We found things in a bad mess at the second line shanty-hospital where
+they were dumping the wounded as fast as they could bring them in. At
+first we were told that none were fit to be carried farther that night;
+and after we had done what we could we went off to hunt up a shake-down
+in the village. But a few minutes later an orderly overtook us with a
+message from the surgeon. There was a German with an abdominal wound who
+was in a bad way, but might be saved by an operation if he could be got
+back to the base before midnight.
+
+Would we take him at once and then come back for others?
+
+There is only one answer to such requests, and a few minutes later we
+were back at the hospital, and the wounded man was being carried out on
+a stretcher. In the shaky lantern gleam I caught a glimpse of a livid
+face and a torn uniform, and saw that he was an officer, and nearly done
+for. Rechamp had climbed to the box, and seemed not to be noticing what
+was going on at the back of the motor. I understood that he loathed the
+job, and wanted not to see the face of the man we were carrying; so when
+we had got him settled I jumped into the ambulance beside him and called
+out to Bechamp that we were ready. A second later an _infirmier_ ran
+up with a little packet and pushed it into my hand. "His papers," he
+explained. I pocketed them and pulled the door shut, and we were off.
+
+The man lay motionless on his back, conscious, but desperately weak.
+Once I turned my pocket-lamp on him and saw that he was young--about
+thirty--with damp dark hair and a thin face. He had received a
+flesh-wound above the eyes, and his forehead was bandaged, but the rest
+of the face uncovered. As the light fell on him he lifted his eyelids
+and looked at me: his look was inscrutable.
+
+For half an hour or so I sat there in the dark, the sense of that face
+pressing close on me. It was a damnable face--meanly handsome, basely
+proud. In my one glimpse of it I had seen that the man was suffering
+atrociously, but as we slid along through the night he made no sound.
+At length the motor stopped with a violent jerk that drew a single moan
+from him. I turned the light on him, but he lay perfectly still, lips
+and lids shut, making no sign; and I jumped out and ran round to the
+front to see what had happened.
+
+The motor had stopped for lack of gasolene and was stock still in the
+deep mud. Rechamp muttered something about a leak in his tank. As he
+bent over it, the lantern flame struck up into his face, which was set
+and businesslike. It struck me vaguely that he showed no particular
+surprise.
+
+"What's to be done?" I asked.
+
+"I think I can tinker it up; but we've got to have more essence to go on
+with."
+
+I stared at him in despair: it was a good hour's walk back to the lines,
+and we weren't so sure of getting any gasolene when we got there! But
+there was no help for it; and as Rechamp was dead lame, no alternative
+but for me to go.
+
+I opened the ambulance door, gave another look at the motionless man
+inside and took out a remedy which I handed over to Rechamp with a word
+of explanation. "You know how to give a hypo? Keep a close eye on him
+and pop this in if you see a change--not otherwise."
+
+He nodded. "Do you suppose he'll die?" he asked below his breath.
+
+"No, I don't. If we get him to the hospital before morning I think he'll
+pull through."
+
+"Oh, all right." He unhooked one of the motor lanterns and handed it
+over to me. "I'll do my best," he said as I turned away.
+
+Getting back to the lines through that pitch-black forest, and finding
+somebody to bring the gasolene back for me was about the weariest job I
+ever tackled. I couldn't imagine why it wasn't daylight when we finally
+got to the place where I had left the motor. It seemed to me as if I had
+been gone twelve hours when I finally caught sight of the grey bulk of
+the car through the thinning darkness.
+
+Rechamp came forward to meet us, and took hold of my arm as I was
+opening the door of the car. "The man's dead," he said.
+
+I had lifted up my pocket-lamp, and its light fell on Rechamp's face,
+which was perfectly composed, and seemed less gaunt and drawn than at
+any time since we had started on our trip.
+
+"Dead? Why--how? What happened? Did you give him the hypodermic?" I
+stammered, taken aback.
+
+"No time to. He died in a minute."
+
+"How do you know he did? Were you with him?"
+
+"Of course I was with him," Rechamp retorted, with a sudden harshness
+which made me aware that I had grown harsh myself. But I had been almost
+sure the man wasn't anywhere near death when I left him. I opened the
+door of the ambulance and climbed in with my lantern. He didn't appear
+to have moved, but he was dead sure enough--had been for two or three
+hours, by the feel of him. It must have happened not long after I
+left.... Well, I'm not a doctor, anyhow....
+
+I don't think Rechamp and I exchanged a word during the rest of that
+run. But it was my fault and not his if we didn't. By the mere rub of
+his sleeve against mine as we sat side by side on the motor I knew he
+was conscious of no bar between us: he had somehow got back, in the
+night's interval, to a state of wholesome stolidity, while I, on the
+contrary, was tingling all over with exposed nerves.
+
+I was glad enough when we got back to the base at last, and the grim
+load we carried was lifted out and taken into the hospital. Rechamp
+waited in the courtyard beside his car, lighting a cigarette in the
+cold early sunlight; but I followed the bearers and the surgeon into the
+whitewashed room where the dead man was laid out to be undressed. I had
+a burning spot at the pit of my stomach while his clothes were ripped
+off him and the bandages undone: I couldn't take my eyes from the
+surgeon's face. But the surgeon, with a big batch of wounded on his
+hands, was probably thinking more of the living than the dead; and
+besides, we were near the front, and the body before him was an enemy's.
+
+He finished his examination and scribbled something in a note-book.
+"Death must have taken place nearly five hours ago," he merely remarked:
+it was the conclusion I had already come to myself.
+
+"And how about the papers?" the surgeon continued. "You have them, I
+suppose? This way, please."
+
+We left the half-stripped body on the blood-stained oil-cloth, and he
+led me into an office where a functionary sat behind a littered desk.
+
+"The papers? Thank you. You haven't examined them? Let us see, then."
+
+I handed over the leather note-case I had thrust into my pocket the
+evening before, and saw for the first time its silver-edged corners and
+the coronet in one of them. The official took out the papers and spread
+them on the desk between us. I watched him absently while he did so.
+
+Suddenly he uttered an exclamation. "Ah--that's a haul!" he said, and
+pushed a bit of paper toward me. On it was engraved the name: Oberst
+Graf Benno von Scharlach....
+
+"A good riddance," said the surgeon over my shoulder.
+
+I went back to the courtyard and saw Rechamp still smoking his cigarette
+in the cold sunlight. I don't suppose I'd been in the hospital ten
+minutes; but I felt as old as Methuselah.
+
+My friend greeted me with a smile. "Ready for breakfast?" he said, and
+a little chill ran down my spine.... But I said: "Oh, all right--come
+along...."
+
+For, after all, I _knew_ there wasn't a paper of any sort on that
+man when he was lifted into my ambulance the night before: the French
+officials attend to their business too carefully for me not to have been
+sure of that. And there wasn't the least shred of evidence to prove that
+he hadn't died of his wounds during the unlucky delay in the forest; or
+that Rechamp had known his tank was leaking when we started out from the
+lines.
+
+"I could do with a _cafe complet_, couldn't you?" Rechamp suggested,
+looking straight at me with his good blue eyes; and arm in arm we
+started off to hunt for the inn....
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Coming Home, by Edith Wharton
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